


What's Loved, Lives (And Sometimes Advises)

by NightsMistress



Category: Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Genre: F/M, Kidfic, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-11
Updated: 2013-08-11
Packaged: 2017-12-23 02:21:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/920852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NightsMistress/pseuds/NightsMistress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes even wizards need their mothers to tell them everything will be okay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What's Loved, Lives (And Sometimes Advises)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [astraev](https://archiveofourown.org/users/astraev/gifts).



> Astraev, a confession: I was stalking your tumblr long before you suggested that I go there for story ideas. In my defence, it seemed like a fabulous (and completely not creepy!) idea at the time.
> 
> Thank you to panicbelle, SilverFlight VelvetMouse, who despite my insistences otherwise refused to tell me that this story sucked.

When storms blew in from the bay, they made up for their infrequency with their fury, buffeting anything caught out in them from pillar to post. Nita Callahan-Rodriguez hadn’t been caught in the storm, but her husband was and his plane had already been delayed two hours because of weather conditions at the airport. It was one of those moments where Nita wished that Kit could have simply teleported home from the conference despite all the questions that would cause at Kit’s work.

“I’m not impressed,” she told the wind sternly as it banged and whistled against the glass pane of the window. Fortunately they had had time to seal up all of the leaks, so Nita didn’t have to get up from her comfortable spot in bed. She’d finally found a way to sit in bed to read to accommodate the increasing swell of her abdomen, and she was loathe to get up. At this stage of her pregnancy, getting up or down was a major production.

This didn’t stop her from dividing her attention from her manual and her book, carefully tracking Kit’s progress after she finished each chapter. It made for disjointed reading, and by the time Kit’s status updated him in New York, Nita was halfway through her novel and not quite sure what was going on. Next time, she promised herself, she would read a comfort book rather than ruin the reading experience by only reading part of a book she had never read before.

There was a bang of displaced air, which was entirely normal in this household these days. Nita was considering setting up a permanent transit point, with all the wizards coming in of late.

“Hello?” Kit called from the doorway, accompanied by the noises of his hanging up his coat and putting his boots away.

“Up here,” Nita called back.

“Heck of a storm,” Kit said, his voice getting louder as he came closer to the door. “You waited up for me? It’s just past eleven.”

“I was reading my book,” Nita said, lifting the book up from where it was nestled against her before putting it down on the bedside table. She hoped that Kit didn’t ask her what it was about. “How was your conference?”

By the quirk of Kit’s mouth, he knew very well what she was doing, but took it in good grace. “It’s a sad thing you couldn’t go, because it was really boring. Also there was sludge everywhere.”

“Oh, that’s nice,” Nita said, raising her eyebrows. “I’m just a distraction, am I?” She wasn’t really that upset. Work was busy at the moment for Nita and she couldn’t have spared the time away, not in amongst the cataloguing that never ended and training her replacement for when she went on maternity leave. Further, Kit wasn’t senior enough to have his work pay for her travel in addition to his own, and they could use the money on more important things.

“A very nice one that I missed constantly,” Kit said, unbuttoning his shirt. Nita took a moment to admire the long, lean lines of his torso, exposed as he fiddled with the sleeve cuffs of his dress shirt. “And how’s Squidget?”

“She is not Squidget,” Nita said with utmost dignity. “Her name is Jellybaby. I’ve told you this before.”

“Of course, of course,” Kit said, as he pulled on his pajama top. “How could I forget? Oh right, because she’s much bigger than a jellybaby now.”

“Are you saying I’m fat?”

Kit’s head shot up at this, mouth opening to argue his case. Then he noticed the way that Nita’s mouth quirked at the corner and he just shook his head.

“That was mean,” Nita admitted. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t think you are,” Kit said, getting into bed next to her.

“I’m not,” Nita said. “And she’s sleeping now. It’s nice.”

“Yeah.” Kit had this vaguely stupid smile that somehow transcended into awestruck. “I bet.”

“But now I am going to sleep,” Nita announced, finally finding a comfortable place to lie down next to Kit. “Because in two hours she’ll be kicking me awake again.”

 

*

Nita opens her eyes and knows that she is not dreaming. Her dreams tend to be a peculiar mix of allegory and straightforward explanation, something to be studied and interpreted later on for answers. This, on the other hand, was intimately familiar. She remembers swimming in this ocean as a humpback whale as a child, but knows that that ocean was nothing but an echo of the ocean she swims in now. She is in Timeheart, in the Atlantic Ocean as it was meant to be, before the Lone Power interfered with the creation of their universe.

There’s a shadow moving through the water, something very large and immeasurably old and familiar despite not having seen him in over a decade. She’s older now, of course, with all the changes that come with time, but Ed hasn’t changed at all. Timeheart has done little to erode that sense of age and weight that Ed carries inside him, and she would recognize him in a heartbeat no matter where she was. She sings a greeting to him, and is unsurprised when he turns and acknowledges her.

“Old enough to love, sprat?” Ed says.

“Yes,” she says, knowing what he means. It’s something people have said to her since she was fifteen, albeit without the bite that Ed manages to imbue into his words even now. “Thanks to you.”

It’s a pleasure to hear from Ed again, and she thinks for a moment that maybe she could stay here and talk to him. There is no distress in her. While there are the momentary annoyances of adulthood — bills to be paid, coworkers to negotiate, patrons to deal with — Nita is content with her life. It’s not the wild chaos that her adolescence was, with her going away to other planets every second month, but she likes her life. She likes how her wizardry has integrated with her job, and she wants to tell Ed about the life he gave her by his sacrifice. But something tells her that this is not why she is here and with a pang of regret she swims away from him through the cool salt water.

She swims from the ocean to a hospital room, a transition that seems entirely sensible now that she is dreaming, and she slides from humpback whale to small girl sitting in an uncomfortable plastic hospital chair. She can see a reflection of a young girl in her shiny black Mary Janes; looks very young with her hair in pigtails and a solemn, anxious expression. Nita hasn’t worn her hair in pigtails in years, and she remembers with a smile that this must be when she first met Dairine. She remembers staring at the shock of red hair and being convinced that Dairine was looking right at her, despite what her father said. In retrospect, it was the first sign that Dairine was very precocious. However, when she looks at the baby in the crib next to the bed, it isn’t Dairine. When she looks down at her shoes again, the reflection is clearer, and it’s not of herself, but instead someone she both knows more intimately than anyone else in her life and someone she has never met before.

“Mom?” she says, suddenly frightened.

“Here, sweetheart,” her mother says from the doorway. She looks the same as she does in Nita’s memories, light on the balls of her feet like the dancer she was, and Nita realizes that the woman on the bed must be herself.

“I don’t understand,” Nita says. This isn’t completely true; Nita understands that if the woman on the bed is her then the child must be the one that she and Kit are expecting, and Timeheart is very rarely linear with what it shows you. She doesn’t understand how she didn’t recognize herself, and she thinks understanding that will mean that she will understand why she is here. Why couldn’t she see herself?

When she blinks, the room changes to the living room in her parents’ house, still with the same paint scheme that they had when Nita was a small child. Nita is an adult again and she squirms, unable to find a comfortable position on the couch. Her daughter squirms in protest, and Nita rests her hand to try and soothe her. It doesn’t work, but she finds the movement comforting nonetheless. She’s a creation of Kit and Nita, and her own being and it’s something that Nita finds fascinating. If, however, a little uncomfortable. She is sure that there is no such thing as a comfortable position to sit that takes the strain from her back and hip, but she is determined to shift until she finds it anyway.

“I remember that,” her mother says with a smile, sitting down beside her. “Can’t be long now.”

“No, thank God,” Nita says, eventually using a pillow as a back support. It doesn’t ease the ache in her lower back entirely, but it helps a little. “Six weeks, the doctor says.” She makes a grimace. “I’m eager to meet her, really, it’s just …”

“You’re sick of being pregnant?” Betty says.

“Yes,” Nita says fervently. “At least Kit’s letting me do things still.” She frowns now. "How much do you know? About...us." She reaches up to hold the wedding ring she keeps on a chain now that her fingers have swollen too much to wear it comfortably. The metal band is cool and soothing against the palm of her hand and she smiles to herself about the memory of Kit telling her earnestly that when he saw this ring he knew it had to be the one because it made fun of his indecision like Nita would have.

"I know you married your best friend a year ago in our yard," her mother says. Her tone turns teasing as she adds, "Though having a tree as a celebrant is a little unconventional."

"We had a human celebrant marry us at the registry," Nita says. "We just thought that it would be unfair that S'reee and Liused couldn't attend."

"And the kitten."

"It’s traditional to have a bard at weddings, or so she told us." After this, Nita sighs unhappily. "I wish you could have been there."

"I know."

"I wish you could go to the hospital with me too, when she's born."

"I know,” Betty’s smile is sad. “I wish I could go too. You two still haven't decided on a name?"

"We've decided to not decide until she's born when we can see what she looks like." Then, in a rush, Nita says "How do you have a baby?"

"It's rather inevitable once you reach this point," Betty says.

Nita looks up at her sharply, looking for any signs of mockery. There wasn't any. "What do you mean?"

"It's going to happen regardless,” Betty says. “All you can do is the best you can when it comes.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Nita says with a sigh. “You and dad always seemed like you knew where you were going with … _everything_.”

“We didn’t.”

“Oh,” Nita says. This doesn’t satisfy her, but it has the ring of truth about it. As a wizard, Nita is good at telling when something is true, and while this truth is unpleasant, it is undeniably true. She was, however, hoping for a manual that doesn’t contradict itself like all the parenting books she’s found in the library. “So it’s just like everything else?”

“Unfortunately,” Betty says. “But I know that you’ll be fine.”

“How?”

“You’re my daughter.”

“ _Mom_ ,” Nita says, her voice breaking. She realizes, when her mother hugs her, that she’s crying and she clings to her like she was the child in the previous vision. Her mother pats her back as she sobs. “Mom, will I be okay?”

“You’ll be brilliant,” she says. She sounds so convinced that Nita believes her without questioning why. “Both of you will.”

 

*

Nita woke up after this, her face wet with tears. She noticed after she wiped the tears away that her hand was indented with the shape of her ring, and after she saw this she felt it was very important that she told Kit what her mother had to say.

“Kit,” she said, shoving his shoulder gently. Kit grunted but didn’t make any further efforts to wake up. “Kit,” she said again, this time shoving his shoulder harder. At this, Kit rolled towards her and squints.

“Neets?” He sounded sleepy and rumpled, and Nita was overcome for a minute with love for him. “What’s going on? Are you okay? Is it the baby?”

“No, I’m okay,” Nita said, shaking her head. “I spoke with my mom. She says that we’ll be fine as parents.”

“Oh,” Kit said, frowning slightly. Then he smiled, wryly, as he added, “It’d be pretty bad if we weren’t.”

“She said that too,” Nita said with a small laugh. “That it was inevitable at this point.”

Realization dawned on Kit’s face. “Timeheart?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m glad that she knows,” Kit said. “However that works.”’

“I’ve never really thought about it,” Nita said. “It’s Timeheart. I don’t think we’re meant to know about how it works until we’re there.”

“Which, hopefully, is a long way off,” Kit said. He took Nita’s hand. “We’ll be fine. Your mom said so.”

“Yeah, and you can’t argue with my mom,” Nita said. “Go back to sleep.”

Kit didn’t need any further encouragement.

“Thanks, mom,” Nita said quietly, as she tried to settle into a comfortable position. “We’ll do you proud yet.”


End file.
